The Unburnt Hour

At a rain-swept Greyhound terminal, Lira Vane watches the last bus of the night pull away, and with it, every reason she had to walk away from the life she buried fifteen years ago. Maren Voss is supposed to be dead. She walked into a fire and never came out. But the city's wards have begun to fail, and word on the street says Maren is alive, hunted, and carrying a stolen hour of time the witch-Council would burn the city down to recover. Rook Ashford, an enforcer who never leaves witnesses, is already closing in. Councillor Thane offers Lira a place at the old table in exchange for what her sister knows, but his mercy has teeth, and the laws he serves were written in older blood than either of them. Desperate, Lira reaches out to the only allies who might still answer: Sable Thornwood, a burned-out oracle who sees what the hour hides; Dax Calloway, whose debts to Maren run deeper than blood; Petra Losh, who knows which of the old pacts can still be broken; and Yven, who has spent a long, strange life making sure certain fires never finish burning. Fell is already hunting. The rain will not stop. The wards will not hold past dawn. And the unburnt hour is counting down, taking with it every witch who touches it, including the sister Lira has spent half her life trying not to find.